Interview:
Frankenstein Interview, that originally appeared in the Anorexic Press magazine in 2001. Conducted by Mark Splatter, with Dave Grave and Jermz.

Dinner with Frankenstein

(an interview by Mark Splatter)

After several weeks of tracking down the reclusive Frankenstein, who has only just recently began making appearances and a forthcoming studio album, I finally cornered him at the Gower Gulch Denny's on Sunset. Brandishing a torch I forced him inside, where I proceeded to calm him with many cups of coffee and an order of cheese fries. Thus the interrogation began.

MS: Any Crazy stories from Frankenstein's past?

F: Well there's been a few… like how I learned skunks like sun chips. Our old guitarist Roman, we were at a rest stop and he started feeding these skunks these sun chips. They came up and were eating out of our hand! This ranger comes by and says you better not be feeding those skunks!" Well the skunks seem to think otherwise! We'd rather have them eating our sunchips than doing anything else to us. Well we figured, they didn’t spray us so we won't stink tonight.

MS: In a nutshell what's the history of Frankenstein?

F: Well, me and Jeremy were drinking one night and we woke up and then we had this band! We hired everyone else and after years of roaming the wilderness now we have a full band! No, the amusing story… Dec 83, Stiv Bators band, right before Lords of the New Church played and me and my friend Chris Trent were at the after party, and we were talking about ultimate band names. Chris was playing with me at the time and Chris had his own band called Drums of Panic, and I had a band called Bone Cult. I told Stiv that I thought that Frankenstein was the ultimate band name. Stiv said "Yeah we were Frankenstein for a while. I said yeah, that’s why we never used it. He says "You should use it, I think we only played like one show".

We tried to put the band together, but everyone was "I don’t know I don’t Know", and at this point in 85, the LA scene was starting to veer toward either a glitter rock revival or straight up deathrock/industrial. My opinion was that if we did the glitter rock revival LA would lose all credibility. And it did. We got Glam Metal out of it! So anyway, I wrote this column for Skratch magazine and I did a blurb about Frankenstein, so I pulled together Frankenstein. We did some rehearsals, getting ready to do a few shows, but our drummer got killed in a freak car accident. So that killed everything right there. I didn’t resurrect it until the following year when I got together a prototype of Frankenstein, The Screaming Things, which lasted 6 months, then two years, then finally we started using Frankenstein!

MS: So you had Bone Cult, then before that Voodoo Church?

F: Yes, and before that Zombie Legion in '79, after I was the Spastic Cadaver. We had a sound that I described as monster sounds with jungle beat, I was very into the Cramps. I wanted something very dark but punk rock. We had that together for a year and a half. Then there was this girl I knew from the valley, Karla DeKarla and her friend Tina Winter. Id seen her around at clubs. They had a band called Normal School, really awful! But we had some songs in common. Zombie Legion was playing a party in Thousand Oaks, so we told them to come up and do some new songs with us, so we fused together, half of Zombie Legion and Karla and Tina, and that was Voodoo Church.

MS: I Heard there was a rivalry between Christian Death and Voodoo Church?

F: Yeah Well the LA Weekly called us the only competition for Christian Death, so Rozz Williams didn’t like us very much! But Tina had a thing with James McGearty. But friction began to build in the band, we were firing and hiring people, that’s when Chris Trent got involved. We got Izzy Dead [who wound up in an early version of Guns'n'Roses!], we got rid of Bob and X Ray, then Tina started to get out of control, so I split, and the band lasted for about 6 months after and they had the record come out. If you notice on the record it says "Definitely NOT a grave undertaking… RIP VC". Meanwhile I started Bone Cult.

MS: So who were some of your contemporaries at that point?

F: People-wise or bandwise? In the Screaming Things we ha Harry Drumdini in the band, who was also in the Cramps, Strap on Jimbo, Jonny Brute, X ray

So After wandering the wasteland with no band members to be had, I could not in my realm find suitable Frankenstein material. So William Faith put his hand in.

MS: This is in the last year or two?

F: Yes. In 99 we did that song for the blackout AD comp. We needed a drummer so we brought in Steven Grey on drums, and we needed another guitar so we got this man (Jeremy) on hell guitar, and then Mister Bart Sinister on bass.

MS: William and Jeremy have been involved in the underground scene for quite some time, what about everyone else, what's their history?

F: Oh Well there was that heroin/pedophile ring… No well, Williams been in Shadow Project, Wreckage, Mephisto Walz, Christian Death, of course Faith and the Muse. Bart Sinister was in a band Blood Flag, Steven Grey of Faith and the Muse.

MS: Jeremy what bands have you been involved with?

J: I've played live for a number of bands, Element, Kommunity FK, Ichor, Subversion, Faith and the Muse, Dark Theatre, Patchwork, a number of bands I cant remember.

MS: What can you tell me about Fate Fatal in 1982?

F: Well I was the Noon Goon at the school and my mom was his guidance councilor! My mom came to see me play and hang out with Voodoo Church one night and Fate was there and says, "You’re the noon goon at my school!" So he was watching me spit worms out of my mouth and stuff, and now look at him! I kinda feel responsible!

MS: Yeah, now that he's swinging Octopi into his audience! So What about recordings? What kind of recording history does Frankenstein have? Any old albums or demo tapes?

F: Well there are demos, there are a lot of bootlegs, and we had a song on a compilation called 'Punk Bites', 4 band 4 song 7". We did a number of tapes, people gave us some stuff that sound guys had recorded, we got a three song demo which our then excellent guitarist did. In 95 we went into the studio and got some great tracks down. Then when William popped in we got the Blackout AD comp. I always wanted to release stuff that Jim recorded, but he wanted money for them. We offered him his money, but then he supposedly recorded over them in a fit. I've heard that he still has them though. Right now we are in the middle of re-recording. We've got to finish that up before the tour. This is all the material that I've done from Zombie Legion all throughout now. Because of all the lineup changes, backstabbings, and swindles involved over the years, we are going to call it "An Ugly display of Self Preservation" featuring a nice mummified corpse on the cover in good old fashioned deathrock style.

MS: What about your Denny's obsession?

F: I like Denny's! The coffee is good, and you know its going to be the same no matter where you go. And they are open 24 hours.

MS: Have you been to greasy spoons all over the country?

F: Quite a few. Nothing says dysentery like home cooking!

MS: I love greasy spoons, the only place Ive found that beats NYC diners is Cantors and Damiano's. How about Oki Dogs?

F: Yeah, its not in the same place though. In the punk days everyone would go to the Oki Dog before the 11:00 show and ask all the people that were coming from the 9:00 show and see if it was worth going. Then the cops would roll around and say "Hey get out of here or we're gonna bust your head!" So that’s when we'd all go creepy crawling in Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

I scared the crap out of Tina Winter there once. We had like 10-20 people. I looked over and there was a tarp and a bunch of boards, and I'm like hey wow, an open grave! We lift up these planks and theres a casket in it! It hasn’t been filled in! So I get in at the far end and my friend has people come over and say hey, heres an open grave! He'd bring em over and I'd jump out and scream! So Karla comes over, I scare the crap out of her, and she says hey I know that laugh, that’s Dave Grave! She goes and brings over Tina and we get her. We got like 4-5 people! There was this guy Joe, we called him Joe Mamma. He comes over, lifts the boards up over his head, I jump out, he shits himself and he drops the boards on my head! Then we see the cops are coming, and we start running and I'm bleeding all over the place from my head!

MS: They probably would make you stay inside. "Keep that dead looking guy in there!"

(Conversation drifts to stories and lore about Hollywood Forever Cemetery, people who are buried there, and Porky Pig).

MS: So if there were one band that you could play with, in any time or place, who would it be?

F: Hmmm… The Bee Gees? The Spice Girls, we could give them new names… Bloody Spice. Wounded Spice. Elvis. He's really deathrock now!

MS: So your show at Release the Bats was your first show in how long?

F: Four and a half years. Went off very well I think!

MS: Yes it did! Any closing comments?

F: Yes, we demand more female groupies. Something needs to be done about that!

For more info on Frankenstein,

http://www.mercyground.com/frankenstein/